Compilations galore for Bob Dylan should be expected. Any artist with a CD worth of hits is going to find their back catalogue racked through at least a few times a year to piece together a stocking stuffer album or something to tide over new listeners. Super Hits is that, a compilation CD which you can find, somewhere, out there on eBay. Just ten on this album and all of them deserve a place. Therein lies the problem. Super Hits takes no risks. It is as it says it is, the super moments from a career littered with classics. Even then, it is easy to mention this missed song or this strange inclusion. There are plenty of the latter. Some odd choices in the face of what appears to be a lack of space on the CD. Things Have Changed, is certainly a bold choice with only ten slots available.
In fact, it is the only Dylan song picked from anything after Blood on the Tracks. The latest aside from his Academy Award-winning track is Lay, Lady, Lay, and Tangled Up in Blue. That opens up a whole host of weirder problems for Super Hits. There is an aversion to some of his best-ever songs, even with the ten-track setlist, this is inexcusable. Super Hits feels more like a sampler which snaked its way out of a filing cabinet than anything fit for release. Snubbing The Basement Tapes and Desire is a bold move. Even Time Out of Mind is snubbed for the sake of keeping the project relatively close to vacant nostalgia bait. But then Things Have Changed scuppers this theory entirely. What, then, is its purpose? We may never know, but it is not the work of some maddened bootlegger. This is a Sony Music project.
Are saner heads at work with Sony, now? Probably not. Those in power would still like to see Super Hits reprinted over a decade after its release. Release is not the right word. It’s a breach of containment. Dylan compilations are all too frequent but Super Hits is a low rung. No ambition can be found in this one. Very safe choices which provide the entry point into Dylan that can be felt on his albums. There is no need for a compilation when you can stream an album of his works, get the whole story while you can. At least Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door makes it through. Super Hits is very light on those so-called hits and the problem comes not from the limitations but in the latter song choices.
Never bother with Super Hits. Buy it to burn it, remove it from public sight. It is a lazy compilation of just ten songs. A passing listener could put together a better offering of Dylan classics. Each song is perfect, that much is fair but the lacklustre sense surrounding its creation, the “that’ll do” attitude present from the album cover to the context of song placement, out of order for whatever reason, feels tiresome. There are better ways to experience the best works of Dylan, and a cracked version of Super Hits is of no interest. It is a fascinating symptom of a much wider problem which does not prevail as much in compilation efforts of artists now but certainly moves the conversation to another extreme. Some tackle filler and some limit themselves so much that the value is dropped. Super Hits is in the latter category.
